by K. C. May
Tokpah stood, grabbed his pole-arm, and took his place behind Kaoque, watchful but not threatening. Kaoque stood as well, bowing to Liera. He glared at Edan, lips pressed tightly together.
“May I present Kaoque Ewhirk, Emissary to the Lord Ruler of Cyprindia, and his guardian, Tokpah?” Edan paused to give Kaoque the opportunity to bow to the supposed queen, but he stood straight and still. “Kaoque, it’s my honor to introduce you to Queen Feanna Kinshield of Thendylath.”
Feanna found a place beside the bed where she watched the scene. It was all she could do not to snort derisively at Liera playing her part.
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” Liera said. Her voice cracked, but she smiled through it. Feanna had to hand it to her. She hadn’t thought Liera would agree to participate in such a fraud. Perhaps she wasn’t as pure and good as she’d like people to believe.
“You try to cozen us? That you would bring me a false queen is unconscionable,” Kaoque spat. He let loose a string of curses that caused a blush across Liera’s pale features. “How dare you. Do you take this as a joke?”
Go, Kaoque, Feanna thought.
“I—I beg your pardon?” Edan said, puffing himself up. “You dare accuse—”
“I saw this woman in the palace the day I arrived,” Kaoque said. “You claimed the queen was not present, and yet she was.” He pointed directly at Liera, who shrank back from his accusatory finger with wide eyes and open mouth. “You, yourself, gave me a tour of the palace, and in the great hall hangs a painting of the new king and queen. The woman pictured is not this woman. Days later, I watched the palace come alive with activity and was made to wait in this room without explanation for hours. First, you failed to tell me the queen was available to hear my message, and then you bring an imposter to deceive me. This is an outrage.”
This was what Feanna lived for. She watched with eagerness, expecting Edan to bluster and cover his lies with more lies. To her disappointment, he did neither.
Edan’s entire body seemed to deflate. “You’re quite right, I’m afraid. I recognize the importance of coming to an agreement with Cyprindia as soon as possible. I didn’t wish to deceive you, but when you announced you were leaving, I became desperate. The queen—the true queen—is nowhere to be found. All we can do is wait until King Gavin returns.”
Kaoque’s face was still impenetrable, but Feanna could tell Edan’s story had aroused his curiosity. “And why would King Gavin’s return make a difference in this regard?”
“Because he’s a powerful mage,” Edan said. Beside him, Liera nodded like a puppet. “King Gavin can use his mystical vision to see into people’s hearts and find them if they’re nearby. If Queen Feanna hasn’t been taken by... some unseen enemy, then with his magic, we’ll find her.”
“To what unseen enemy do you refer?” Kaoque asked with a wariness in his tone.
Feanna wanted to caution him away from this silliness because, as they both knew, she hadn’t been abducted at all, and pursuing an impossible line of reasoning was a waste of time. Besides, Edan needed to pay for imprisoning her, and Kaoque was the ideal person to dispense this justice. She crept close to him and whispered into his ear, “Never mind that.” With one hand on his shoulder, she shifted, felt his curiosity, and then shifted again to push into him her own indifference for the subject and her anger and feelings of betrayal towards Edan.
“I only meant that if you and Tokpah carry amulets that hide you from notice,” Edan explained, “then someone else might have similar magic and used it to abduct the queen.”
Kaoque sat silently for a moment before whispering something to Tokpah in his language. Feanna felt his rage building and smiled, pleased with herself and her ability to influence him. Tokpah only nodded in response. “We have not abducted your queen,” Kaoque said in a seething tone. “Your accusation offends us.”
“I apologize. I didn’t mean to sound accusatory. Please understand that we must explore every possibility.”
“No one from Cyprindia has committed such a crime. Your affairs are not ours. It is time to say good-bye, Edan Dawnpiper and...” He eyed Liera up and down. “...whoever you truly are. Tokpah and I will be rising early for our journey tomorrow.”
“I beg you to stay a few days longer, Emissary Kaoque,” Edan said. “All will be well when you meet King Gavin, I assure you.”
“Can he remove the injury of your betrayal and accusation from my heart? Can he take back the lies you have told me in your effort to manipulate me into betraying my mission, my Lord Ruler, and my god?” He began shoving his few belongings into his satchel.
“You aren’t leaving now, are you?” Edan said.
“It is best that we sleep at an inn tonight so that we are not corrupted by the dishonor that abounds under this roof.”
Edan rocked back as if he’d been slapped. Feanna nearly snorted a laugh, though she hadn’t expected Kaoque to leave right that moment. Perhaps she’d overdone the anger and betrayal bit. This was too soon. She wasn’t ready. She couldn’t run to her room, pack her bags for traveling within a few minutes’ time, and lug them all outside by herself. She would need time to form a plan for stealing a carriage.
With two snaps of his fingers, Edan attracted the attention of Taria, standing guard outside the door. “Again, I apologize for any insult. It was unintended. I hope you’ll reconsider. I would hate to have to insist.” With that, he left, escorting Liera out by the elbow, and Taria shut the door behind him.
Chapter 47
Cirang felt a kinship with Hennah that she’d never felt with Daia or even King Gavin. She and Hennah had been through the same experience of recognizing the awfulness of who they’d been, and while Hennah hadn’t committed the terrible crimes Cirang had, her eyes reflected a deep, soul-aching shame all the same.
She helped the battler up. Hennah, who’d been the tallest of the women at the Viragon Sisterhood, now seemed to shrink into herself, folding her wide shoulders inward and hunching her back. Even still, she towered a good four inches over Daia and about eight over Cirang.
Daia clapped Gavin’s back with a smile. “Congratulations. It was a resounding success. I’ll bet you’re anxious to get back to Tern.”
“Yeh. Cirang, get Hennah geared up,” the king said. “She’s a First Royal Guard, and she should dress as one.”
Cirang motioned with her head for Hennah to follow her to the horses. “I understand what you’ve been through—the shame, the remorse. If you want to talk about it...”
“I’m not like you, Cirang,” Hennah said. “I never became a murderer.”
That much was true. Cirang pulled Hennah’s mail shirt from the large satchel she’d tied to the front of Hennah’s saddle and unstrapped the extra sword from her own. “You’re right. I was wicked for much longer than you were, and I wasn’t gaoled right away. You were lucky.”
She left Hennah to put her armor and weapons on and returned to the stream.
“I don’t savor going back to the yellow realm,” the king said.
“At least we know what to expect next time,” Daia said.
He shook his head. “I’ll take two o’the other battlers with me from now on. You’re in as much danger there as I am.”
She seemed to deflate. Nodding, she said, “You’re right. I’ve no defense against those wizards.”
“My liege, do you want me to try re-etching the rune now?” Cirang asked. If it turned out she couldn’t do it, perhaps it would be better to find out now, before they left the area where Rarga lived so that they could return to the midrealm and have the cat-creature do it again.
“Yeh, better try it now in case you need another lesson afore we go back to Tern.”
She smiled. “I haven’t carved anything since taking this body. I hope I can guide these hands as expertly as I did my old ones.”
“You didn’t have a problem carving up those four people you killed,” Daia said. “Your skill with blades wasn’t lost.”
Cirang
nodded. She understood why Daia clung to her hatred, but surely it was eating at her. What good was such loathing when the object of it presented neither danger nor insult? “The original Cirang was a battler. I didn’t need to teach these hands how to use a sword or knife.”
“Let’s go upstream a bit,” King Gavin said. “I don’t know if still lake water has the same effect. Rarga didn’t use it, so that’s got to mean something.”
Beside the stream, he squatted, and she did as well. He handed her the stone, smooth and slightly warm from his hand. The rune symbol was blackened, its lines the width of her small finger. She was nervous, knowing that King Gavin was counting on her. Though her mind knew what to do, she hadn’t carved a thing since she’d awoken in this body. What worried her the most was that she hadn’t had the urge to carve anything. The desire was there, but the passion was not. As Tyr, the need to put chisel to wood felt as natural as hunger or thirst. Going more than a couple weeks without carving anything would sour his mood and make him restless.
Now, as Cirang, she felt nothing.
“Well?” he asked.
“I’m a bit nervous,” she said, chuckling to hide her embarrassment. “The pressure to perform for my king has birthed butterflies in my belly.”
His gap-toothed smile was disarming, and his brown eyes were warm. “You’ll do fine. Daia,” he called, waving an arm. “Lend Cirang some o’your strength.”
Something powerful filled her, but it wasn’t the skill to carve. It was more like a physical strength, as if she could fight a stronger, more skilled opponent and win. She felt determined, confident. “All right. I’m ready.”
Gavin scooped up some water and poured it over the stone, while Cirang pressed her finger into the grooves of the rune’s symbol. She retraced the symbol the way Rarga had, again and again, but nothing happened. The water didn’t make it sizzle. No smoke rose from it. All she was doing was dragging her finger along the lines.
“Keep trying,” Gavin said as he continued to scoop and pour.
“I can’t,” she said. “It’s not working. I must be missing something.”
“You’re not pushing with your intent,” he said. “From the belly. Push.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she kept tracing the rune anyway, imagining herself pushing from within. Over and over she traced the rune.
“You’re not pushing,” he said, frustration deepening his tone.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to push. Please tell me how to do this.”
Gavin shook the water off his hands and stood. “You watched her. Didn’t you see how she did it?”
“I did see, but I didn’t see her pushing anything. I only saw her finger make the path.” Her eyes began to burn. She hated that King Gavin was angry with her. She hated disappointing him.
He let out a growl of frustration. “Guardians, why isn’t this working?”
All Cirang heard was the gurgling of the stream and the birds in the trees. The king seemed to be listening. His face changed, becoming less angry and more sympathetic.
“Sorry I hollered at you,” he said. “I didn’t realize...”
“What did they say?” Daia asked.
“The talent for carving is in you, but it’s in your soul—the part of you that’s Sithral Tyr. When we’re born with a special talent, like Daia’s conduit or Feanna’s empathy, the talent is of the soul, but it manifests through the essence. Your essence belonged to Cirang, not Tyr, and so your talent for carving never made it through.”
That coincided with how she felt inside—that the talent was there, yet distant like a memory.
“So does that mean she’s worthless?” Daia asked.
“O’course not. It means we got to pull it out. Infuse her essence with it. Make it Cirang’s talent, not just Tyr’s.”
A quiet warning whispered to Cirang in the back of her mind. “How do we do that?” she asked. Her voice was small like a child’s.
“I got to reach in and pull it out. I’ve never done anything like that afore now, but the Guardians assure me it isn’t dangerous, even if I don’t get it.”
A memory surfaced from Tyr’s life.
He was tied to a pole, his arms lashed to a crossbeam, and a leather disk shoved into his mouth to bite down on. The clan shaman, holding a leather-wrapped wand with a gold bulb at one end, began chanting. A pain more intense than his mind could even comprehend started in his belly and crept through his entire body as if something inside was burning its way out.
That something had been his soul, torn from his body and imprisoned in a green porcelain cat figurine.
Cirang shuddered, and her shudder became a quiver, an uncontrollable shaking. No, no, no. Her instinct was to run, but he would stop her with magic and pull her back, the way he’d pulled those vicious dogs off her in the other realm. Her teeth chattered, and she clamped her jaw tightly shut to hide her fear.
“Do you trust me?” the king asked.
How could she answer that? He’d never done this before. He’d never even heard of this before. It was like a child preparing to cut out a tumor and asking if she trusted him.
He put his hand on her shoulder, so warm and comforting. She wanted to trust him. She had to. There was no other choice. Swallowing down her misgivings, she nodded.
Chapter 48
While King Gavin listened to the Guardians, she watched his face. He appeared to truly believe they existed; he looked at a particular spot, he nodded, he questioned them about details. Still, Cirang couldn’t shake the notion that somewhere along the way, he’d gone raving mad, that the only voices he heard were those of insanity, of people who existed only in his mind.
“Awright,” he said, now setting those intense brown eyes on her. They looked determined and confident, not mad. “It should only take a minute. I can see the skill deep inside you. It’s attached to your spirit, out o’your essence’s reach. I got to pull it a bit—not all the way out but enough for it to get, I don’t know. Lodged. Yeh, enough for it to get lodged in your essence.”
She took a reflexive step backwards, though she felt herself nodding in acquiescence. Her heel hit something, and she stumbled, flailed, and caught herself.
“You’re afeared o’this,” he said in a gentle tone. “I promise you’ll be glad for it when it’s over. You want your talent back, don’t you?”
Again she nodded, swallowing the grit that was stuck in her throat. Her body quaked even harder, and she couldn’t stop it.
“Let’s get it over with,” Daia said from behind. “King Gavin wants to get home to his wife.”
Cirang flinched and turned. They were trying to trap her, to strap her to a pole and rip her soul out. Run, her instinct told her. Her feet felt light, as if they were ready to obey.
Daia gripped her upper arm. “You owe him your life. If this is to be your death, then so be it. You don’t have a say in this. Submit willingly, or Hennah and I’ll make you submit, but you’re doing this one way or the other.”
“Get a hold of yourself, Cirang,” Hennah said, grabbing her other arm. “Your king needs you. Put aside whatever fear you have.”
It was easy for them to say. They’d never had their souls ripped out. “I’m trying, but the memory is so clear, like it only happened this morning.”
“What memory?” King Gavin asked.
“Of the separation. When my soul was torn from me and trapped in the porcelain cat.”
The three of them looked at each other with wonderment in their faces. She’d never talked about it. There hadn’t been any reason to.
“That’s not what I’m going to do,” King Gavin said. “I promise. I need your talent, Cirang. I need you to carve runes for me. I wouldn’t do anything that would make that impossible.”
She swallowed again. “Will it hurt?” Her voice was not the deep voice she’d grown accustomed to, but small like a little girl’s.
“I don’t know. If it does, I apologize for that, but this, I got
to do.”
All her life as both a Nilmarion man and a Viragon Sister, she’d been strong, the one others counted on to keep a clear mind and step in front of whatever dangers threatened her people. Now, she felt nothing but fear, perhaps a side effect of having drunk the tainted water. King Gavin had told her that her essence was completely zhi now, the opposite of what she’d been for the last several years of Tyr’s life. She wondered whether he could fix her too—to find someone in the yellow realm with whom to exchange her essence and make her more like the person she’d been before committing her first murder. Before slipping on that enchanted necklace Ravenkind had given her. Before darkness and chaos had begun to infiltrate her mind.
With all the will she could muster, she forced her body to stand still and stop shaking. “Yes,” she said, her deep voice returned. “I understand. I submit willingly.”
They found a place to sit, with Daia to King Gavin’s left and Cirang facing him. Hennah stood by, ready to react in whatever way she was needed, though none of them knew what to expect.
His eyes rolled back slightly beneath his lowered lids and started to quiver the way they did when he was using his so-called hidden eye. A tickling sensation in her gut told her he’d begun.
The tickling became a vibration, like how the shock of a sword tip striking rock rippled up the blade to the hilt. She felt something like a fist reaching into her, burning as it went deeper. She gritted her teeth, and her hands flexed, groping for something on the sides of her hips to hold onto. All she found were weeds and grasses, and she ripped them out and groped for more. The pain grew more intense as the burning deepened. She growled, trying to contain it, her hands groping and ripping. A hand grasped her wrist and put something into her palm—something leather. With both hands, she pulled it and dug her fingers into it while she endured the pain.
